INTRODUCTION. 



THE study of the forms of life no longer existing on the earth, from 

 the scanty remains preserved to us, has provoked a very great 

 interest almost from the commencement of historical times. The very 

 small portion of this vast field I am treating of in the following pages has 

 a special attraction, as it deals to a great extent with forms familiar in a 

 living state to our immediate forefathers and even to some of ourselves. 

 Although I have here arranged the species systematically, they fall into two 

 distinct categories, namely those known externally as well as internally, and 

 those of which we know bones and egg-shells only. Under the former 

 category might be included those merely known from descriptions or figures in 

 ancient books, as well as those of which specimens exist. In the present 

 work several plates have been reconstructed from such descriptions in order 

 to give some idea of their probable appearance. There is considerable 

 difference of opinion as to the approximate date of the disappearance of 

 many of the species known from bones dug from deposits which have been 

 variously determined as pleistocene and post-pleistocene. It seems to me 

 that this problem can never be entirely solved, but the significant fact remains, 

 that while many bones of these species in one locality have been collected 

 in the kitchen-middens of the former inhabitants, in other localities the same 

 bones occur in what seem to be much older formations. 



In view of this and kindred facts, I have mentioned many species 

 which some ornithologists will probably consider outside the range of the 

 present treatise, viz., birds which have become extinct in the last seven- or 

 eight-hundred years. Taking my first category, viz., those species whose 

 exterior is more or less known, our knowledge is very variable in scope; 

 about some we have a very full and even redundant literature, such as the 

 Great Auk, the Labrador Duck, and Notornis, while of others, such as most 

 of the extinct Parrots from the West Indies, the "Giant" of Mauritius, the 

 " Blue Bird " of Bourbon, and so forth, we have the very scantiest 

 knowledge. Even in the times of Leguat and Labat there must have been 

 many species, now extinct, of which no mention has ever been made, for 



